Plantation 5 Year rum. This is one of my favorite budget bottles of rum. You can find this in the $15-20 range and it is absolutely fantastic and such a steal! It’s a great representation of a well crafted rum at a fantastic price point that will make you question why you ever drank Bacardi or Captain Morgan. Brought to us by the masters at Pierre Ferrand, this rum is first blended in Barbados before being sent to France to finish its aging in Pierre Ferrand cognac barrels drawing on traditional cognac-making methods. This is one I will happily mix up in tiki drinks, but also do not mind sipping straight as well!
Sooo, by now you probably know that most rum is made from molasses, but what exactly IS molasses? In short, molasses is a byproduct of crystallized sugar production. Sugarcane is a grassy stalk-like plant that is full of delicious sweet juices.
- The juice is squeezed out and boiled, resulting in some crystallized sugar, and the remaining concentrated liquid is called light molasses or “cane syrup”
- A second boiling (& crystallization) of this results in dark molasses
- And a third boiling results in blackstrap molasses
The sugar content of the first boiling is highest, so as you go from light to dark to blackstrap, the flavor becomes increasingly bitter, rich, and complex, almost pungent. Since molasses still contains residual sugar, it can be distilled into alcohol…and hence, we have rum.